


Life for life

by ramblebrambleamble



Series: Tumblr shorts [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Grand quests, Magic, POV First Person, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24205417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblebrambleamble/pseuds/ramblebrambleamble
Summary: The success of one quest means the failure of another.
Series: Tumblr shorts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747021





	Life for life

The world is full of fidgeting frogs and prayers for deliverance.

The air rings with the frog song, and the desert rain drips uselessly from my fingers. Though I suppose that you can no longer call this place a desert.

I know not how the magic was wrought; what happened to the rare and potent beauties that made up the ecosystem. One moment, sand near as far as the eye can see and the cure to my father's curse at my feet, within my trembling grasp. The next-

The next, my hand is empty and the dunes are becoming green waves at a pace I cannot believe. And everywhere, frogs.

I am getting soaked. A frog lands in the place that the cure once grew. I look up to the horizon where a distant mountain had stood, but is now hidden by a rapidly growing forest. 

My cousin's voice grows louder and louder, almost drowning out the frog song with his pleas for this illusion to break and reveal the cure for his beloved uncle right where we last saw it. He swears that he won't complain about the sand and the heat and the rationing of the water between oases and all the other things that he has been cursing, if only the Blessing of the Sun would bloom before us once more.

But this is no illusion and no amount of bargaining with empty air will change the fact that my father is going to die. He had only a year left to live when I started my search, and it took me half that time to find the Sun's Blessing. By the time I made it home...

I hear laughter, faint under the frogs and my cousin's sobs. Laughter, and then the squelching of soggy boots as three familiar faces troop out of the new-grown trees and into my sight. I had last seen these faces several weeks ago when our parties parted ways as we headed to our separate goals.

They must only have been a dune or so away...

It was then that I remembered the black-haired one's clumsily coded ramblings about gods and quests and restoring dead lands to life.

"You..." I murmured, barely believing it. "You did this."


End file.
